At face value, the Philadelphia Flyers acquisition of Andrew MacDonald on Tuesday isn't a big deal. Sending second- and third-round picks back to the New York Islanders for a defenseman making $550,000, while steeper than what Anaheim paid for the superior Stephane Robidas, is reasonable enough.

The problem for Flyers fans, whether they know it or not, will start if and when Philadelphia tries to re-sign MacDonald. At 27 years old, and considering the market for defensemen who play a lot of minutes, block shots and put up decent points totals, he's going to look for gigantic raise — and the Flyers need defensemen enough to overpay him.

What makes MacDonald a pretty strong buyer-beware: brutal puck possession numbers, even for a bad team. The Islanders take just 43.4 percent of all even-strength shot attempts when MacDonald is on the ice, down from 49 percent as a team, the lowest such number of any of their regular defensemen. Only eight defensemen in the league have a worse percentage of Corsi events than MacDonald.

A player's usage can affect those numbers — who he plays against, how often he starts in the offensive zone — and in MacDonald's case, it certainly does. The minutes he plays aren't easy, but his struggles outstrip that, far and away.

So, while he's a guy that could help in a different situation, he's been miscast as a top-four defenseman and expects to be paid as such when he hits the market. The likelihood he turns out to be worth it is small; the odds that the Flyers are the the team that pays him are not.

The Boston Bruins and Los Angeles Kings were among the teams reportedly also interested in MacDonald.

Philadelphia had been reportedly thinking of attempting to pry Alex Edler from the Vancouver Canucks, along with Ryan Kesler. This at least theoretically affects the former, since there's only so many minutes to go around.

It doesn't much affect the latter, since MacDonald (for now) is very cheap, and the Flyers didn't send anything back to New York that they'd need for Kesler.